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Deacon grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the door.
With the house silent, and the twins safe, everything drained from me at once, and I sank onto the bottom step of the stairs. I wanted to scream and cry and rage and laugh. But I didn’t have anything left.
I should go talk to Bryan. To Paige. Deacon was right about screaming being counterproductive. Instead of moving, I dropped my head into my hands.
The day rushed into my mind in a single, suffocating onslaught. The way the morning started waking up next to Adam. How cute it was finding Paige with someone she cared about. The growing horror of realizing Bryan was missing, the calls, the gossip, Adam lying to me…
I fisted clumps of my hair, tugging until my scalp ached.
The thoughts didn’t stop.
I should’ve seen some of this—that Bryan wasn’t happy, that Paige was changing, that the twins had managed to put a tank in my barn—but I was too busy spending my time screwing around. I wanted to learn how to date, and my kids had needed me.
What kind of horrible mother did that make me?
Footsteps sounded behind me, soft on the carpet like someone who’d learned where all the creaks in the floor were over the years.
Had Paige been sneaking out?
I couldn’t deal with that possibility on top of everything else.
She sat next to me on the stairs. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“For what?” As far as I could tell, she was the most innocent in all of this. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I made Bryan mad, by dating Jamie.”
“No. Don’t ever feel bad about that.” At least I could do one thing right. “He doesn’t get a say in who you date. Ever.”
Paige laughed weakly. “But he wouldn’t have left last night otherwise. Besides, the tank is my fault. The fact that Adam kept it a secret is my fault. I wasn’t going to use it for anything bad; it was supposed to be a surprise. It’s not loaded, the gun doesn’t work as far as I know, but I wanted to restore it. I wanted to prove to everyone that I could. I made Adam promise—”
“You’re also not responsible for him lying to me.” There was a block in my head angry at me for falling for him, and needing it to be his fault.
Paige leaned into me. “I’m still sorry. I didn’t want to upset you. Have you ever saidfuckthat much before?”
“Probably not in the entirety of my life.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You should’ve told me you had a tank.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Grounded?”
I was tempted to ground both of them for the next several months, just so I’d always know where they were. “No. But you do have to go clean up the breakfast no one ate and do the dishes.”
“Now?”
I kissed her on the forehead. “Now.” My voice was soft.
Paige headed into the kitchen, and I pushed to my feet to go talk to Bryan. He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Why did you have to callthem?” he asked.
“Because I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere and I knew they could help.”
Bryan rolled his head to the side and looked at me. “Every time that truck pulls into our driveway, the entire town talks about you.”
“The entire town has been talking about me since I dared move here with two children and no husband.”
